Dear Moss: 5 months

“Making the decision to have a child - it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”
― Elizabeth Stone

Moss-shaped heart

Dear Moss,

Recently I started to think about how we were kind of born together, when you were born as a person and I was born as a mom.  Sentimental schlock, maybe, but it makes me smile that we have such a special moment in common.  And we're growing up together, Mossy -- you, me, and Dad.  Life feels breezy and light these days, as if I'm cheating somehow.  There are non-trivial Moss-based family challenges to be solved, no doubt, but they feel like the delicious kind of challenge, like sprinting up a hill, or solving a sprawling but simple algebra problem.

curiouser and curiouser

an early dog lover

I'm not sure how many different ways I'll be able to say this without sounding like a broken record eventually, but you are a wonder and a delight.  You're so easy-going and joyful and chill, everyone says so.  I would say however, that patience is not a component of your easy-going-ness.  Always working on the next thing, easily bored, desperate to do the things you can't quite do yet.  Slow down!  Still stubborn, my determined child, concentrating so hard on everything.

Hand.  Not.  Lining up.  With object.  AAAARGH

You've figured out how to roll from your back to both sides, and you like to rock back and forth from the toys on your left to the toys on your right.  And when placed onto your tummy you can easily return to your back (now that you realized you have to raise your arm rather than try to roll over it).  But you still haven't quite grappled with that final piece of the self-propulsion puzzle -- rolling from back to tummy on your own.  Boy are you a seriously determined little inch worm, though.

so embarrassing, yet so endearing

I can tell you want so badly to move around more on your own than you can yet -- you strain and struggle and it's hard to watch but I'm working hard to hold back and let you find your own way.
You seem ready for solid food, but we aren't going to help you with that just yet.  The pediatrician said it was fine, but I concluded otherwise from my independent study (that waiting until after 6 months protects best against allergies and promotes optimum nutritional exposure).  We'll reassess right at 6 months though, because you already have 5/7 of the "readiness signs" (able and willing to chew, developing a pincer grasp in addition to the palmar grasp, eager to participate in mealtime, able to signal being done with a meal by turning away, and doubled birthweight).  You're only missing the ability to sit up unassisted, and your tongue-thrust reflex is still around.  We did decide that your first food will be avocado, so get ready -- they are so delicious.  Since you are so outwardly eager to join us at mealtimes I've started giving you a spoon and bowl to play with, and next week you may try some breastmilk in a sippy cup.

The big news for you these days are your feet.  "Oh. My. Goodness!  Did you know I have toys that never roll away ATTACHED to my BODY?!  Why would you keep this from me?!  Now I must make up for lost time and put them in my mouth for 15 minutes during every diaper and clothing change.  I hope you've cleared your schedule."

OMG my body has two sides COOOOOL

I recently skimmed through "What to Expect the First Year" and decided that it's a terrible book, but that's a very large and boring can of worms so let's just enjoy its relatively innocuous laying out of milestones for this month.

By five months, 90% of babies can:

• Hold their head steady, even when upright (old news for a Moss)
• Push up from stomach to chest, supported by arms (also old news, come on let's get to the hard stuff)

• Pay attention to an object as small as a raisin (try as small as a pine needle, as we learned yesterday)

it feels... flat

• Squeal in delight (your favorite place to do this is with that other baby inside the mirror)
• Reach for an object (um, yeah, this accounts for 95% of your activity in a given day)
• Smile spontaneously (I can see your smiles all the way back in your scalp as your face relaxes and melts into one of those giant Moss grins)
• Smile back when you smile (unless you're tired, at which point you bury your head into the nearest shoulder)
• Grasp a rattle held to backs or tips of fingers (you're a grabby little monster, you've got that down pat)

 you can grab a book,

 a tree, 

a different, better tree

• Keep head level with body when pulled to sitting (yes, and sit up, stand up, sit down, lie down is still one of your favorite games, for sure)

75% of babies can:

• Roll over one way (only tummy to back, but you're only a few muscle fibers and some inspired arm positioning away from back to tummy) 
• Bear some weight on legs (since you were 2 months old, you crazy high-tone baby)
• Say “ah-goo” or similar vowel-consonant combinations (I maintain that you're saying "uncle", but yeah)
• Razz (yes, you just figured out the spit bubbles last week. lovely.)
• Turn in the direction of a voice (or a computer, or a barking dog, yeah, you got it)

Roughly 50% of babies can:

• Sit without support (nope, too busy eating feet to finish the work on rolling and sitting just yet)

And only 25% of babies can:

• Pull up to standing position from sitting (nope, not by yourself, but definitely while holding on to someone's fingers)
• Stand holding on to someone or something (nope, almost though. your muscle tone is there but your balance is not)
• Object if you try to take a toy away (haha yes, if nothing else, you sure do know what you want!)
• Work to get a toy out of reach (yes, you work towards toys, but you don't get anywhere really, and it makes you frustrated)
• Pass an object from one hand to other (yes! ooh la la, so advanced)
• Look for dropped object (nah, not really)
• Rake a tiny object with fingers and pick it up in fist (you're all over this one, NO ONE is safe from the scratchy grabby hands)
• Babble, combining vowels and consonants such as ga-ga-ga, ba-ba-ba, ma-ma-ma, da-da-da (nope, not yet, you're still in the shouting, yalping, shrieking phase)

Your sleep is all over the place for the last 2 weeks or so.  You used to have a predictable pattern, and I was never tired.  From when you were about 4 weeks all the way up to 4 months, you would wake up once every 3 hours or so between 9pm and 9am, and then go right back to sleep after a drink (sleeeeeeeeep-hungry-awake!-eat-eat-eat-sleeeeeeeeeep).  Then, due to some combination of all the crazy nonsense illnesses, our 3-time-zone adventure, and your taxing developmental schedule, you went nutso with the sleeping.  It's like you're a different baby every night -- yesterday was 8pm bedtime, awake every hour between midnight and 6, then a 4-hour nap at 10am -- today it was awake until 11, eat every 2 hours but stay up for an hour each time to play with your feet -- tomorrow you will try something I haven't even thought of yet.  Hopefully it's some kind of crazy hybrid growth spurt/readjustment/sleep regression thing that will hone in on some manner of pattern in the next week or so.

I forgive you because cute.

And okay, so actually, I guess there is still one element of predictability remaining: your institution of the 4am Shouting Hour.  The first night it happened, I shot awake and tried *everything* to soothe you, -- nursing, diaper, humming, rocking, sleep sheep, swaying, new clothes, less warmth, more darkness, more warmth, less darkness -- but you just kept saying AAAAAAH!  YAAAAH!  YUHYUHYUUUUUUH!  Then you closed your eyes contentedly about an hour later.  Then it happened 3 more nights in a row, and I noticed it was always right around 4am, and I also noticed you were not distressed in any way and had zero unfulfilled needs (except for, obviously, the need to shout for an hour).  So now, 10 days later, I just open my eyes, glance at the clock, grimace, and settle in for my serenade.  Hopefully you will soon complete this data collection phase for Study 5 of your "My Voice" experiment (understandably a key component of your "What Can My Body Do?" grant proposal, the mainstay of your program of research investigating "Being Alive is Awesome")...

Love you Moss, for all days.


~~~
Vital Stats:

15.0 pounds (50th %ile), 24 inches (15th %ile) with a 44cm head (85th %ile).

Likes: board books with Dad, GooGooBun, foot rubs, hearing your own voice, eating feet, MIRRORS, bathrooms with automatic faucets, sleeping on people, dog ears, being licked on the face by a dog, eating fabric, Xmas tree lights, naked time, grabbing, combinations of several of these things at a time

Dislikes: sleeping not on people, being in loud places while tired, being cold, the time it takes to unhook a nursing bra, divided attention


Current adorable idiosyncrasies:

You like having something in your hands as you fall asleep.  Someone's Finger is the most desirable thing, followed closely by GooGooBun, while Anything Made of Cloth and Your Own Face are tied for third, and My Boob will suffice if nothing else is available.  You knead and squeeze and pinch and grab and it's just really sweet.

holding a legwarmer *and* GooGooBun

grabchewgrabchewgrabzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

You love being kissed on the bottoms of your feet.  You will stop whatever you're doing and melt with goooooo-s and laughter and I test that this is still the case approximately 40 times per day.

You love being tickled most of all on your neck of all places.

You often hum-groan to fall asleep.  I really must get this on tape (ha, someday the etymology of that will be so weird) while it's still a thing -- when you're tired you start to repeat a rumbly moan in the back of your throat about once every breath and then it slowly quiets down and then it s l o w l y   s l o w s       d   o   w   nzzzzzzzzzz.

You're really into scratching things to explore their textures.  You find a new thing and you put your fingernails down onto it and open and close your palm for upwards of 10 completely captivated minutes.  Unless the thing makes noise when you do this (carpet, keyboards, corduroy, cardboard, backpacks, wood), then it'll be a good 15 or 20 minute task.  Aoro is a huge fan of this when it's directed at his head.

Your poop face.

Late November Photo Dump

Greetings and welcome to the Moss Blog, back in business.  So sorry for the lapse last week, among the things going on that prevented timely posting: weathering a family cold, schleping on a couple of flights across the continent, rebooting a 4-month-old's sleep schedule across 3 time zones, making several social visits to a hospital, consuming large amounts of holiday victuals, regularly exceeding the recommended dosage of Trofatters per day, introducing Moss to snow, and dealing with 4 month vaccines.  We're still recombobulating after all that, so I'm just going to give you all the photos of the madness.  Next week we shall have a Dear 5-month-old Moss letter *and* a Ben post, and I have some fun holiday things in the works for later this month.

The calm before the storm, by which I mean taking a 4-month-old on a redeye flight from SFO to Knoxville through O'Hare during Thanksgiving week.  WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

Luckily, nothing went wrong at all (except that I couldn't manage a non-blurry picture of the plane ride)

Finally at Mimi T's, enjoying the ring sling

Life kind of doesn't get better than this...

Moss's first snow (and first introduction to the hilarious buffalo sweater)

Meeting Gramimi C

Hey, I have an Uncle Pete too!

Mmm, yes, go on.  What about this "itsy-bitsy" spider?

The coveted, long-awaited, last available 4 generations photo.

 Finally met all the grandparents!

 Moss is the same size as this 11-month-old

 One more visit to the hospital

 Totally beat.

 Oh yeah, then this happened.

Happy December!

Thanks Auntie Anna!

Cozy like a fox.

Poop-related updates and videos

Last week in the letter to a 4 month old Moss, I described a very cranky baby and attributed the crankitude to about 20 different things, including teething, developmental frustrations, sleep regressions, the kitchen sink, everything.  While it's certainly the case that there is a lot of social/cognitive/motor/physical growth going on, I missed the boat on noticing that the fuss-monster was actually sick.  :(  His first stomach virus diagnosis explains everything I had been brushing off as symptoms of anything else I could think of -- the reappearing arsenic hour (nope, just evening abdominal pain), the seemingly random and sporadic fear-like responses to the changing table and blanket time (nope, just horrible GI cramps brought on by lying flat), the sleep regression (nope, just waking up every hour to feel icky), the green poop, drool and hand-biting I thought was teething (nope, just diarrhea, extra stomach acid and wanting to nurse more because ouch).

poor sick Moss right before the doctor told us about the baby-eating virus terrorizing the town

Oh and speaking of green poop, you're welcome for my lack of facebook postings about that.  I actually had to restrain myself on more than one occasion (once when I put two and two together and realized frequent green poop = GI bug, and once when he had his first normal looking poo after starting probiotics).  I've been told by more than a few people that my life would revolve around poop in a very strange new way during my first few years as a parent, but I was skeptical.  Nope, seriously my thought process when his poo was finally back to that beautiful mustard brown was "YES!  Oh man, what an exciting life event.  To facebook!  WAIT.  NO."

Anyway I'm both embarrassed and disappointed that I wasn't tuned in enough to my sweet baby to intuit his illness instantly, but at the same time I'm proud that I'm laid back enough not to FLIP OUT and call the doctor every time he cries 5 minutes longer than usual.  So I'm calling it even.

Now that he's feeling better, it's so obvious looking back that he was sick -- he's been so cheerful and energetic and giggly and content for a couple of days now, even given his huge and frequently exasperating developmental task list.

And of course, now that he's feeling better, tomorrow we're going to hop on a red eye flight from SFO to O'Hare for a 4 hour layover before boarding a prop plane to Knoxville, where it's 3 hours later and 40 degrees colder.  WHAT COULD GO WRONG?  Tune in next week for the next exciting chapter in the book of ridiculous Trofatter goings-on.  It's about time for the next Ben post, I'll see if I can prod successfully enough for that to be posted next Monday.

And now I'd like to sum up our week with a video about laughing and pooping.

Dear Moss: Four months

Dear Moss,

Time flies like an arrow, little boy, I swear I just wrote your three month letter last week.  I'm glad we relished the sweet spot we were in a few weeks ago, because now your teeth are being total jerks as they slice into your gummy smile with no regard for your quality of life.  This, plus a growth spurt, plus your "world of events" wonder week (which came a little early), PLUS figuring out how to roll from front to back *PLUS* then pretty much immediately (two days later) figuring out how to roll from back to side is just so much for your poor little self.  You're okay-ish during the daytime, but the witching (6) hour(s) is definitely back.  Around 5 or 6 it's just TIME TO FREAK OUT.  You seem to be experiencing a complete identity crisis:

"I once was a boy who just liked to smile and suck on my two fingers, but now I have to GRAB ALL THE THINGS and frantically desperately put them all in my mouth because everything's all itchy and burny in there.  And I really need sleep so I can grow (which hurts too, by the by), but I just figured out that my body has sagittal symmetry and is kind of cylinder-shaped, and that I can exploit these properties and actually move around on purpose -- did you know I could do that?  why didn't you tell me? -- so obviously I need to practice that kind of all the time, you know?  So I try to make time for it all, but there just aren't enough hours in the day, so then it all catches up to me and I just completely decompensate because frankly, I have no idea how to do everything I want to at the same time.  That comes with adulthood right?  Oops, no time to listen to your answer, I must roll over toward whatever that thing is over there that isn't currently in my mouth..."

On top of this (or possibly partly because of it), you're a few days deep into a crazy sleep regression.  You used to sleep so well, we used to have a routine, we used to all be so rested and refreshed, but now you wake up every 45-60 minutes to nurse and play and fuss.  So fun!  :-/  Plus we have *still* not quite figured out a sleeping arrangement that works well for everyone.  Maybe if you and your daddy weren't so Princess+Pea-y about things, we'd have an easier time.  But no.  You need a firm surface, Daddy needs a soft one.  You need the humidifier, Daddy needs the fan.  You need warm air, Daddy needs the window open.  But alas, you both want to sleep next to Mama, who can (luckily) sleep anywhere.  I'll let you know when I figure this one out.

But this new skill of yours, the intentional grab, it's so effing cool.  It's different from the haphazard swiping you started last month.  I hand you your dragonfly/ball/toothbrush/GooGoo Bun/chain link/book and you reach out gingerly and take it (and putitinyourmouthasfastasyoucan, of course).  You can even turn the pages of your board books!  You're obviously thrilled by the simple pleasure of being able to manipulate things.  You take something and (when you're done seeing if it fits in your mouth), you turn it over and over and inspect it from every angle.  If someone holds his hand in front of you, you try to pluck the fingers off one by one.  ("Does this one come off?  Nope.  Does this one come off?  Nope.  Does this one...")  Then you try to pry the fingers apart as if hands worked like banana peels.  Then of course you just try to jam it in your mouth.  And often when you reach for something, you stick your tongue out the side of your mouth in a perfect portrayal of cartoon concentration.  Haven't managed to grab a picture of that yet, but I really hope I do before you change again.

You are a strong little one.  You can stand on your own two feet with just a little bit of help for balance, and you can do this for a long long time.  The "sit up, stand up, sit down, lie down" game is pretty much your favorite thing ever, especially when it happens 89 times in a row.  You're really not a big fan of being on your back any more, I can tell you yearn for self-propulsion.  You can push yourself up all the way into cobra pose and look around the room.  And you can roll over, which is just so cool.  You can't quite do it every time, and you need to be pretty awake to have the strength and presence of mind for it, but you very much enjoy doing it when the time is right.  I think it startles you a little at first though, when you find yourself on your back after hanging out on your tummy for a while.

You are so talkative.  If a Moss talks in a forest and there's no one around to hear, Moss is still very much chattering away to no one but the trees.  You figured out how to roll your Rs in the back of your throat, and how to yell without crying (you sound like a screech owl).

You're experimenting with volume, crescendoing all over the place.  You mix vowels and consonants together into some creepy baby language that only Mosses know.  And your laugh.  Aaaaaaaaah!  Your laugh is the best contagious thing I encounter all day.

I hope you never outgrow this cheerful, easy-going sense of humor you have right now -- such a pleasant demeanor would serve you well in life.  Although when we really get you going laughing, you get the hiccups every. time.  I do hope you outgrow that.

Many loves, Moss.  Keep thriving this well for a long time, please.  <3

tummy time with Ruby friend 

WHY CAN'T I PUT THESE HANGY TOYS IN MY MOUTH RIGHT NOW 

tried to stay awake reading, didn't work

not the biggest fan of camera flashes